MY PLAN OF CAMPAIGN

(Delivered at the Victoria
Hall, Madras)

As the other day we could not proceed, owing to the crowd, I
shall take this opportunity of thanking the people of Madras for the
uniform kindness that I have received at their hands. I do not know how
better to express my gratitude for the beautiful words that have been
expressed in the addresses than by praying to the Lord to make me
worthy of the kind and generous expressions and by working all my life
for the cause of our religion and to serve our motherland; and may the
Lord make me worthy of them.

With all my faults, I think I have a little bit of boldness. I
had a message from India to the West, and boldly I gave it to the
American and the English peoples. I want, before going into the subject
of the day, to speak a few bold words to you all. There have been
certain circumstances growing around me, tending to thwart me, oppose
my progress, and crush me out of existence if they could. Thank God
they have failed, as such attempts will always fail. But there has
been, for the last three years, a certain amount of misunderstanding,
and so long as I was in foreign lands, I held my peace and did not even
speak one word; but now, standing upon the soil of my motherland, I
want to give a few words of explanation. Not that I care what the
result will be of these words — not that I care what feeling I shall
evoke from you by these words. I care very little, for I am the same
Sannyāsin that entered your city about four years ago with this staff
and Kamandalu; the same broad world is before me. Without further
preface let me begin.

First of all, I have to say a few words about the
Theosophical Society. It goes without saying that a certain amount of
good work has been done to India by the Society; as such every Hindu is
grateful to it, and especially to Mrs. Besant; for though I know very
little of her, yet what little I know has impressed me with the idea
that she is a sincere well-wisher of this motherland of ours, and that
she is doing the best in her power to raise our country. For that, the
eternal gratitude of every trueborn Indian is hers, and all blessings
be on her and hers for ever. But that is one thing — and joining the
Society of the Theosophists is another. Regard and estimation and love
are one thing, and swallowing everything any one has to say, without
reasoning, without criticising, without analysing, is quite another.
There is a report going round that the Theosophists helped the little
achievements of mine in America and England. I have to tell you plainly
that every word of it is wrong, every word of it is untrue. We hear so
much tall talk in this world, of liberal ideas and sympathy with
differences of opinion. That is very good, but as a fact, we find that
one sympathises with another only so long as the other believes in
everything he has to say, but as soon as he dares to differ, that
sympathy is gone, that love vanishes. There are others, again, who have
their own axes to grind, and if anything arises in a country which
prevents the grinding of them, their hearts burn, any amount of hatred
comes out, and they do not know what to do. What harm does it do to the
Christian missionary that the Hindus are trying to cleanse their own
houses? What injury will it do to the Brāhmo Samāj and other reform
bodies that the Hindus are trying their best to reform themselves? Why
should they stand in opposition? Why should they be the greatest
enemies of these movements? Why? — I ask. It seems to me that their
hatred and jealousy are so bitter that no why or how can be asked
there.

Four years ago, when I, a poor, unknown, friendless
Sannyasin was going to America, going beyond the waters to America
without any introductions or friends there, I called on the leader of
the Theosophical Society. Naturally I thought he, being an American and
a lover of India, perhaps would give me a letter of introduction to
somebody there. He asked me, "Will you join my Society?" "No," I
replied, "how can I? For I do not believe in most of your doctrines."
"Then, I am sorry, I cannot do anything for you," he answered. That was
not paving the way for me. I reached America, as you know, through the
help of a few friends of Madras. Most of them are present here. Only
one is absent, Mr. Justice Subramania Iyer, to whom my deepest
gratitude is due. He has the insight of a genius and is one of the
staunchest friends I have in this life, a true friend indeed, a true
child of India. I arrived in America several months before the
Parliament of Religions began. The money I had with me was little, and
it was soon spent. Winter approached, and I had only thin summer
clothes. I did not know what to do in that cold, dreary climate, for if
I went to beg in the streets, the result would have been that I would
have been sent to jail. There I was with the last few dollars in my
pocket. I sent a wire to my friends in Madras. This came to be known to
the Theosophists, and one of them wrote, "Now the devil is going to
die; God bless us all." Was that paving the way for me? I would not
have mentioned this now; but, as my countrymen wanted to know, it must
come out. For three years I have not opened my lips about these things;
silence has been my motto; but today the thing has come out. That was
not all. I saw some Theosophists in the Parliament of Religions, and I
wanted to talk and mix with them. I remember the looks of scorn which
were on their faces, as much as to say, "What business has the worm to
be here in the midst of the gods?" After I had got name and fame at the
Parliament of Religions, then came tremendous work for me; but at every
turn the Theosophists tried to
cry me down. Theosophists were advised not to come and hear my
lectures, for thereby they would lose all sympathy of the Society,
because the laws of the esoteric section declare that any man who joins
that esoteric section should receive instruction from Kuthumi and
Moria, of course through their visible representatives — Mr. Judge and
Mrs. Besant — so that, to join the esoteric section means to surrender
one's independence. Certainly I could not do any such thing, nor could
I call any man a Hindu who did any such thing. I had a great respect
for Mr. Judge. He was a worthy man, open, fair, simple, and he was the
best representative the Theosophists ever had. I have no right to
criticise the dispute between him and Mrs. Besant when each claims that
his or her Mahātmā is right. And the strange part of it is that the
same Mahatma is claimed by both. Lord knows the truth: He is the Judge,
and no one has the right to pass judgement when the balance is equal.
Thus they prepared the way for me all over America!

They joined the other opposition — the Christian missionaries.
There is not one black lie imaginable that these latter did not invent
against me. They blackened my character from city to city, poor and
friendless though I was in a foreign country. They tried to oust me
from every house and to make every man who became my friend my enemy.
They tried to starve me out; and I am sorry to say that one of my own
countrymen took part against me in this. He is the leader of a reform
party in India. This gentleman is declaring every day, "Christ has come
to India." Is this the way Christ is to come to India? Is this the way
to reform India? And this gentleman I knew from my childhood; he was
one of my best friends; when I saw him — I had not met for a long time
one of my countrymen — I was so glad, and this was the treatment I
received from him. The day the Parliament cheered me, the day I became
popular in Chicago, from that day his tone changed; and in an underhand
way, he tried to do everything he could to
injure me. Is that the way that Christ will come to India? Is that the
lesson that he had learnt after sitting twenty years at the feet of
Christ? Our great reformers declare that Christianity and Christian
power are going to uplift the Indian people. Is that the way to do it?
Surely, if that gentleman is an illustration, it does not look very
hopeful.

One word more: I read in the organ of the social reformers
that I am called a Shudra and am challenged as to what right a Shudra
has to become a Sannyasin. To which I reply: I trace my descent to one
at whose feet every Brahmin lays flowers when he utters the words —
यमाय धर्मराजाय चित्रगुप्ताय वै नमः
— and whose descendants are the purest
of Kshatriyas. If you believe in your mythology or your Paurānika
scriptures, let these so-called reformers know that my caste, apart
from other services in the past, ruled half of India for centuries. If
my caste is left out of consideration, what will there be left of the
present-day civilisation of India? In Bengal alone, my blood has
furnished them with their greatest philosopher, the greatest poet, the
greatest historian, the greatest archaeologist, the greatest religious
preacher; my blood has furnished India with the greatest of her modern
scientists. These detractors ought to have known a little of our own
history, and to have studied our three castes, and learnt that the
Brahmin, the Kshatriya, and the Vaishya have equal right to be
Sannyasins: the Traivarnikas have equal right to the Vedas. This is
only by the way. I just refer to this, but I am not at all hurt if they
call me a Shudra. It will be a little reparation for the tyranny of my
ancestors over the poor. If I am a Pariah, I will be all the more glad,
for I am the disciple of a man, who — the Brahmin of Brahmins — wanted
to cleanse the house of a Pariah. Of course the Pariah would not allow
him; how could he let this Brahmin Sannyasin come and cleanse his
house! And this man woke up in the dead of night, entered
surreptitiously the house of this Pariah, cleansed
his latrine, and with his long hair wiped the place, and that he did
day after day in order that he might make himself the servant of all. I
bear the feet of that man on my head; he is my hero; that hero's life I
will try to imitate. By being the servant of all, a Hindu seeks to
uplift himself. That is how the Hindus should uplift the masses, and
not by looking for any foreign influence. Twenty years of occidental
civilisation brings to my mind the illustration of the man who wants to
starve his own friend in a foreign land, simply because this friend is
popular, simply because he thinks that this man stands in the way of
his making money. And the other is the illustration of what genuine,
orthodox Hinduism itself will do at home. Let any one of our reformers
bring out that life, ready to serve even a Pariah, and then I will sit
at his feet and learn, and not before that. One ounce of practice is
worth twenty thousand tons of big talk.

Now I come to the reform societies in Madras. They have been
very kind to me. They have given me very kind words, and they have
pointed out, and I heartily agree with them, that there is a difference
between the reformers of Bengal and those of Madras. Many of you will
remember what I have very often told you, that Madras is in a very
beautiful state just now. It has not got into the play of action and
reaction as Bengal has done. Here there is steady and slow progress all
through; here is growth, and not reaction. In many cases, end to a
certain extent, there is a revival in Bengal; but in Madras it is not a
revival, it is a growth, a natural growth. As such, I entirely agree
with what the reformers point out as the difference between the two
peoples; but there is one difference which they do not understand. Some
of these societies, I am afraid, try to intimidate me to join them.
That is a strange thing for them to attempt. A man who has met
starvation face to face for fourteen years of his life, who has not
known where he will get a meal the next day and where to sleep, cannot
be intimidated so easily. A man, almost without clothes, who dared to
live where the thermometer registered thirty degrees below zero,
without knowing where the next meal was to come from, cannot be so
easily intimidated in India. This is the first thing I will tell them —
I have a little will of my own. I have my little experience too; and I
have a message for the world which I will deliver without fear and
without care for the future. To the reformers I will point out that I
am a greater reformer than any one of them. They want to reform only
little bits. I want root-and-branch reform. Where we differ is in the
method. Theirs is the method of destruction, mine is that of
construction. I do not believe in reform; I believe in growth. I do not
dare to put myself in the position of God and dictate to our society,
"This way thou shouldst move and not that." I simply want to be like
the squirrel in the building of Rāma's bridge, who was quite content to
put on the bridge his little quota of sand-dust. That is my position.
This wonderful national machine has worked through ages, this wonderful
river of national life is flowing before us. Who knows, and who dares
to say whether it is good and how it shall move? Thousands of
circumstances are crowding round it, giving it a special impulse,
making it dull at one time and quicker at another. Who dares command
its motion? Ours is only to work, as the Gita says, without looking for
results. Feed the national life with the fuel it wants, but the growth
is its own; none can dictate its growth to it. Evils are plentiful in
our society, but so are there evils in every other society. Here the
earth is soaked sometimes with widows' tears; there in the West, the
air is rent with the sighs of the unmarried. Here poverty is the great
bane of life; there the life-weariness of luxury is the great bane that
is upon the race. Here men want to commit suicide because they have
nothing to eat; there they commit suicide because they have so much
to eat. Evil is everywhere; it is like chronic rheumatism. Drive it
from the foot, it goes to the head; drive it from there, it goes
somewhere else. It is a question of chasing it from place to place;
that is all. Ay, children, to try to remedy evil is not the true way.
Our philosophy teaches that evil and good are eternally conjoined, the
obverse and the reverse of the same coin. If you have one, you must
have the other; a wave in the ocean must be at the cost of a hollow
elsewhere. Nay, all life is evil. No breath can be breathed without
killing some one else; not a morsel of food can be eaten without
depriving some one of it. This is the law; this is philosophy.
Therefore the only thing we can do is to understand that all this work
against evil is more subjective than objective. The work against evil
is more educational than actual, however big we may talk. This, first
of all, is the idea of work against evil; and it ought to make us
calmer, it ought to take fanaticism out of our blood. The history of
the world teaches us that wherever there have been fanatical reforms,
the only result has been that they have defeated their own ends. No
greater upheaval for the establishment of right and liberty can be
imagined than the war for the abolition of slavery in America. You all
know about it. And what has been its results? The slaves are a hundred
times worse off today than they were before the abolition. Before the
abolition, these poor negroes were the property of somebody, and, as
properties, they had to be looked after, so that they might not
deteriorate. Today they are the property of nobody. Their lives are of
no value; they are burnt alive on mere presences. They are shot down
without any law for their murderers; for they are niggers, they are not
human beings, they are not even animals; and that is the effect of such
violent taking away of evil by law or by fanaticism. Such is the
testimony of history against every fanatical movement, even for doing
good. I have seen that. My own experience has taught me that.
Therefore I cannot join any one of these condemning societies. Why
condemn? There are evils in every society; everybody knows it. Every
child of today knows it; he can stand upon a platform and give us a
harangue on the awful evils in Hindu Society. Every uneducated
foreigner who comes here globe-trotting takes a vanishing railway view
of India and lectures most learnedly on the awful evils in India. We
admit that there are evils. Everybody can show what evil is, but he is
the friend of mankind who finds a way out of the difficulty. Like the
drowning boy and the philosopher — when the philosopher was lecturing
him, the boy cried, "Take me out of the water first" — so our people
cry: "We have had lectures enough, societies enough, papers enough;
where is the man who will lend us a hand to drag us out? Where is the
man who really loves us? Where is the man who has sympathy for us?" Ay,
that man is wanted. That is where I differ entirely from these reform
movements. For a hundred years they have been here. What good has been
done except the creation of a most vituperative, a most condemnatory
literature? Would to God it was not here! They have criticised,
condemned, abused the orthodox, until the orthodox have caught their
tone and paid them back in their own coin; and the result is the
creation of a literature in every vernacular which is the shame of the
race, the shame of the country. Is this reform? Is this leading the
nation to glory? Whose fault is this?

There is, then, another great consideration. Here in India, we
have always been governed by kings; kings have made all our laws. Now
the kings are gone, and there is no one left to make a move. The
government dare not; it has to fashion its ways according to the growth
of public opinion. It takes time, quite a long time, to make a healthy,
strong, public opinion which will solve its own problems; and in the
interim we shall have to wait.
The whole problem of social reform, therefore, resolves itself into
this: where are those who want reform? Make them first. Where are the
people? The tyranny of a minority is the worst tyranny that the world
ever sees. A few men who think that certain things are evil will not
make a nation move. Why does not the nation move? First educate the
nation, create your legislative body, and then the law will be
forthcoming. First create the power, the sanction from which the law
will spring. The kings are gone; where is the new sanction, the new
power of the people? Bring it up. Therefore, even for social reform,
the first duty is to educate the people, and you will have to wait till
that time comes. Most of the reforms that have been agitated for during
the past century have been ornamental. Every one of these reforms only
touches the first two castes, and no other. The question of widow
marriage would not touch seventy per cent of the Indian women, and all
such questions only reach the higher castes of Indian people who are
educated, mark you, at the expense of the masses. Every effort has been
spent in cleaning their own houses. But that is no reformation. You
must go down to the basis of the thing, to the very root of the matter.
That is what I call radical reform. Put the fire there and let it burn
upwards and make an Indian nation. And the solution of the problem is
not so easy, as it is a big and a vast one. Be not in a hurry, this
problem has been known several hundred years.

Today it is the fashion to talk of Buddhism and Buddhistic
agnosticism, especially in the South. Little do they dream that this
degradation which is with us today has been left by Buddhism. This is
the legacy which Buddhism has left to us. You read in books written by
men who had never studied the rise and fall of Buddhism that the spread
of Buddhism was owing to the wonderful ethics and the wonderful
personality of Gautama Buddha. I
have every respect and veneration for Lord Buddha, but mark my words,
the spread of Buddhism was less owing to the doctrines and the
personality of the great preacher, than to the temples that were built,
the idols that were erected, and the gorgeous ceremonials that were put
before the nation. Thus Buddhism progressed. The little fire-places in
the houses in which the people poured their libations were not strong
enough to hold their own against these gorgeous temples and ceremonies;
but later on the whole thing degenerated. It became a mass of
corruption of which I cannot speak before this audience; but those who
want to know about it may see a little of it in those big temples, full
of sculptures, in Southern India; and this is all the inheritance we
have from the Buddhists.

Then arose the great reformer Shankarāchārya and his
followers, and during these hundreds of years, since his time to the
present day, there has been the slow bringing back of the Indian masses
to the pristine purity of the Vedantic religion. These reformers knew
full well the evils which existed, yet they did not condemn. They did
not say, "All that you have is wrong, and you must throw it away." It
can never be so. Today I read that my friend Dr. Barrows says that in
three hundred years Christianity overthrew the Roman and Greek
religious influences. That is not the word of a man who has seen
Europe, and Greece, and Rome. The influence of Roman and Greek religion
is all there, even in Protestant countries, only with changed names —
old gods rechristened in a new fashion. They change their names; the
goddesses become Marys and the gods become saints, and the ceremonials
become new; even the old title of Pontifex Maximus is there. So, sudden
changes cannot be and Shankaracharya knew it. So did Rāmānuja. The only
way left to them was slowly to bring up to the highest ideal the
existing religion. If they had sought to apply the other method, they
would have been hypocrites, for
the very fundamental doctrine of their religion is evolution, the soul
going towards the highest goal, through all these various stages and
phases, which are, therefore necessary and helpful. And who dares
condemn them?

It has become a trite saying that idolatry is wrong, and every
man swallows it at the present time without questioning. I once thought
so, and to pay the penalty of that I had to learn my lesson sitting at
the feet of a man who realised everything through idols; I allude to
Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. If such Ramakrishna Paramahamsas are produced
by idol-worship, what will you have — the reformer's creed or any
number of idols? I want an answer. Take a thousand idols more if you
can produce Ramakrishna Paramahamsas through idol worship, and may God
speed you! Produce such noble natures by any means you can. Yet
idolatry is condemned! Why? Nobody knows. Because some hundreds of
years ago some man of Jewish blood happened to condemn it? That is, he
happened to condemn everybody else's idols except his own. If God is
represented in any beautiful form or any symbolic form, said the Jew,
it is awfully bad; it is sin. But if He is represented in the form of a
chest, with two angels sitting on each side, and a cloud hanging over
it, it is the holy of holies. If God comes in the form of a dove, it is
holy. But if He comes in the form of a cow, it is heathen superstition;
condemn it! That is how the world goes. That is why the poet says,
"What fools we mortals be!" How difficult it is to look through each
other's eyes, and that is the bane of humanity. That is the basis of
hatred and jealousy, of quarrel and of fight. Boys, moustached babies,
who never went out of Madras, standing up and wanting to dictate laws
to three hundred millions of people with thousands of traditions at
their back! Are you not ashamed? Stand back from such blasphemy and
learn first your lessons! Irreverent boys, simply because you
can scrawl a few lines upon paper and get some fool to publish them for
you, you think you are the educators of the world, you think you are
the public opinion of India! Is it so? This I have to tell to the
social reformers of Madras that I have the greatest respect and love
for them. I love them for their great hearts and their love for their
country, for the poor, for the oppressed. But what I would tell them
with a brother's love is that their method is not right; It has been
tried a hundred years and failed. Let us try some new method.

Did India ever stand in want of reformers? Do you read the
history of India? Who was Ramanuja? Who was Shankara? Who was Nānak?
Who was Chaitanya? Who was Kabir? Who was Dādu? Who were all these
great preachers, one following the other, a galaxy of stars of the
first magnitude? Did not Ramanuja feel for the lower classes? Did he
not try all his life to admit even the Pariah to his community? Did he
not try to admit even Mohammedans to his own fold? Did not Nanak confer
with Hindus and Mohammedans, and try to bring about a new state of
things? They all tried, and their work is still going on. The
difference is this. They had not the fanfaronade of the reformers of
today; they had no curses on their lips as modern reformers have; their
lips pronounced only blessings. They never condemned. They said to the
people that the race must always grow. They looked back and they said,
"O Hindus, what you have done is good, but, my brothers, let us do
better." They did not say, "You have been wicked, now let us be good."
They said, "You have been good, but let us now be better." That makes a
whole world of difference. We must grow according to our nature. Vain
is it to attempt the lines of action that foreign societies have
engrafted upon us; it is impossible. Glory unto God, that it is
impossible, that we cannot be twisted and tortured into the shape oil
other nations. I do not condemn
the institutions of other races; they are good for them, but not for
us. What is meat for them may be poison for us. This is the first
lesson to learn. With other sciences, other institutions, and other
traditions behind them, they have got their present system. We, with
our traditions, with thousands of years of Karma behind us, naturally
can only follow our own bent, run in our own grooves; and that we shall
have to do.

What is my plan then? My plan is to follow the ideas of the
great ancient Masters. I have studied their work, and it has been given
unto me to discover the line of action they took. They were the great
originators of society. They were the great givers of strength, and of
purity, and of life. They did most marvellous work. We have to do most
marvellous work also. Circumstances have become a little different, and
in consequence the lines of action have to be changed a little, and
that is all. I see that each nation, like each individual, has one
theme in this life, which is its centre, the principal note round which
every other note comes to form the harmony. In one nation political
power is its vitality, as in England, artistic life in another, and so
on. In India, religious life forms the centre, the keynote of the whole
music of national life; and if any nation attempts to throw off its
national vitality — the direction which has become its own through the
transmission of centuries — that nation dies if it succeeds in the
attempt. And, therefore, if you succeed in the attempt to throw off
your religion and take up either politics, or society, or any other
things as your centre, as the vitality of your national life, the
result will be that you will become extinct. To prevent this you must
make all and everything work through that vitality of your religion.
Let all your nerves vibrate through the backbone of your religion. I
have seen that I cannot preach even religion to Americans without
showing them its practical effect on social life. I could not preach
religion in England without showing the wonderful political changes the
Vedanta would bring. So, in India, social reform has to be preached by
showing how much more spiritual a life the new system will bring; and
politics has to be preached by showing how much it will improve the one
thing that the nation wants — its spirituality. Every man has to make
his own choice; so has every nation. We made our choice ages ago, and
we must abide by it. And, after all, it is not such a bad choice. Is it
such a bad choice in this world to think not of matter but of spirit,
not of man but of God? That intense faith in another world, that
intense hatred for this world, that intense power of renunciation, that
intense faith in God, that intense faith in the immortal soul, is in
you. I challenge anyone to give it up. You cannot. You may try to
impose upon me by becoming materialists, by talking materialism for a
few months, but I know what you are; if I take you by the hand, back
you come as good theists as ever were born. How can you change your
nature?

So every improvement in India requires first of all an
upheaval in religion. Before flooding India with socialistic or
political ideas, first deluge the land with spiritual ideas. The first
work that demands our attention is that the most wonderful truths
confined in our Upanishads, in our scriptures, in our Purānas must be
brought out from the books, brought out from the monasteries, brought
out from the forests, brought out from the possession of selected
bodies of people, and scattered broadcast all over the land, so that
these truths may run like fire all over the country from north to south
and east to west, from the Himalayas to Comorin, from Sindh to the
Brahmaputra. Everyone must know of them, because it is said, "This has
first to be heard, then thought upon, and then meditated upon." Let the
people hear first, and whoever helps in making the people hear about
the great truths in their own scriptures cannot make for himself
a better Karma today. Says our Vyasa, "In the Kali Yuga there is one
Karma left. Sacrifices and tremendous Tapasyās are of no avail now. Of
Karma one remains, and that is the Karma of giving." And of these
gifts, the gift of spirituality and spiritual knowledge is the highest;
the next gift is the gift of secular knowledge; the next is the gift of
life; and the fourth is the gift of food. Look at this wonderfully
charitable race; look at the amount of gifts that are made in this
poor, poor country; look at the hospitality where a man can travel from
the north to the south, having the best in the land, being treated
always by everyone as if he were a friend, and where no beggar starves
so long as there is a piece of bread anywhere!

In this land of charity, let us take up the energy of the
first charity, the diffusion of spiritual knowledge. And that diffusion
should not be confined within the bounds of India; it must go out all
over the world. This has been the custom. Those that tell you that
Indian thought never went outside of India, those that tell you that I
am the first Sannyasin who went to foreign lands to preach, do not know
the history of their own race. Again and again this phenomenon has
happened. Whenever the world has required it, this perennial flood of
spirituality has overflowed and deluged the world. Gifts of political
knowledge can be made with the blast of trumpets and the march of
cohorts. Gifts of secular knowledge and social knowledge can be made
with fire and sword. But spiritual knowledge can only be given in
silence like the dew that falls unseen and unheard, yet bringing into
bloom masses of roses. This has been the gift of India to the world
again and again. Whenever there has been a great conquering race,
bringing the nations of the world together, making roads and transit
possible, immediately India arose and gave her quota of spiritual power
to the sum total of the progress of the world. This happened ages
before Buddha was born, and remnants
of it are still left in China, in Asia Minor, and in the heart of the
Malayan Archipelago. This was the case when the great Greek conqueror
united the four corners of the then known world; then rushed out Indian
spirituality, and the boasted civilisation of the West is but the
remnant of that deluge. Now the same opportunity has again come; the
power of England has linked the nations of the world together as was
never done before. English roads and channels of communication rush
from one end of the world to the other. Owing to English genius, the
world today has been linked in such a fashion as has never before been
done. Today trade centres have been formed such as have never been
before in the history of mankind. And immediately, consciously or
unconsciously, India rises up and pours forth her gifts of
spirituality; and they will rush through these roads till they have
reached the very ends of the world. That I went to America was not my
doing or your doing; but the God of India who is guiding her destiny
sent me, and will send hundreds of such to all the nations of the
world. No power on earth can resist it. This also has to be done. You
must go out to preach your religion, preach it to every nation under
the sun, preach it to every people. This is the first thing to do. And
after preaching spiritual knowledge, along with it will come that
secular knowledge and every other knowledge that you want; but if you
attempt to get the secular knowledge without religion, I tell you
plainly, vain is your attempt in India, it will never have a hold on
the people. Even the great Buddhistic movement was a failure, partially
on account of that.

Therefore, my friends, my plan is to start institutions in
India, to train our young men as preachers of the truths of our
scriptures in India and outside India. Men, men, these are wanted:
everything else will be ready, but strong, vigorous, believing young
men, sincere to the backbone,
are wanted. A hundred such and the world becomes revolutionized. The
will is stronger than anything else. Everything must go down before the
will, for that comes from God and God Himself; a pure and a strong will
is omnipotent. Do you not believe in it? Preach, preach unto the world
the great truths of your religion; the world waits for them. For
centuries people have been taught theories of degradation. They have
been told that they are nothing. The masses have been told all over the
world that they are not human beings. They have been so frightened for
centuries, till they have nearly become animals. Never were they
allowed to hear of the Atman. Let them hear of the Atman — that even
the lowest of the low have the Atman within, which never dies and never
is born — of Him whom the sword cannot pierce, nor the fire burn, nor
the air dry — immortal, without beginning or end, the all-pure,
omnipotent, and omnipresent Atman! Let them have faith in themselves,
for what makes the difference between the Englishman and you? Let them
talk their religion and duty and so forth. I have found the difference.
The difference is here, that the Englishman believes in himself and you
do not. He believes in his being an Englishman, and he can do anything.
That brings out the God within him, and he can do anything he likes.
You have been told and taught that you can do nothing, and nonentities
you are becoming every day. What we want is strength, so believe in
yourselves. We have become weak, and that is why occultism and
mysticism come to us — these creepy things; there may be great truths
in them, but they have nearly destroyed us. Make your nerves strong.
What we want is muscles of iron and nerves of steel. We have wept long
enough. No more weeping, but stand on your feet and be men. It is a
man-making religion that we want. It is man-making theories that we
want. It is man-making education all round that we want. And here is
the test of truth — anything that makes you weak physically,
intellectually, and spiritually, reject as poison; there is no life in
it, it cannot be true. Truth is strengthening. Truth is purity, truth
is all-knowledge; truth must be strengthening, must be enlightening,
must be invigorating. These mysticisms, in spite of some grains of
truth in them, are generally weakening. Believe me, I have a lifelong
experience of it, and the one conclusion that I draw is that it is
weakening. I have travelled all over India, searched almost every cave
here, and lived in the Himalayas. I know people who lived there all
their lives. I love my nation, I cannot see you degraded, weakened any
more than you are now. Therefore I am bound for your sake and for
truth's sake to cry, "Hold!" and to raise my voice against this
degradation of my race. Give up these weakening mysticisms and be
strong. Go back to your Upanishads — the shining, the strengthening,
the bright philosophy — and part from all these mysterious things, all
these weakening things. Take up this philosophy; the greatest truths
are the simplest things in the world, simple as your own existence. The
truths of the Upanishads are before you. Take them up, live up to them,
and the salvation of India will be at hand.

One word more and I have finished. They talk of patriotism. I
believe in patriotism, and I also have my own ideal of patriotism.
Three things are necessary for great achievements. First, feel from the
heart. What is in the intellect or reason? It goes a few steps and
there it stops. But through the heart comes inspiration. Love opens the
most impossible gates; love is the gate to all the secrets of the
universe. Feel, therefore, my would-be reformers, my would-be patriots!
Do you feel? Do you feel that millions and millions of the descendants
of gods and of sages have become next-door neighbours to brutes? Do you
feel that millions are starving today, and millions have been starving
for ages? Do you feel that ignorance
has come over the land as a dark cloud? Does it make you restless? Does
it make you sleepless? Has it gone into your blood, coursing through
your veins, becoming consonant with your heartbeats? Has it made you
almost mad? Are you seized with that one idea of the misery of ruin,
and have you forgotten all about your name, your fame, your wives, your
children, your property, even your own bodies? Have you done that? That
is the first step to become a patriot, the very first step. I did not
go to America, as most of you know, for the Parliament of Religions,
but this demon of a feeling was in me and within my soul. I travelled
twelve years all over India, finding no way to work for my countrymen,
and that is why I went to America. Most of you know that, who knew me
then. Who cared about this Parliament of Religions? Here was my own
flesh and blood sinking every day, and who cared for them? This was my
first step.

You may feel, then; but instead of spending your energies in
frothy talk, have you found any way out, any practical solution, some
help instead of condemnation, some sweet words to soothe their
miseries, to bring them out of this living death?

Yet that is not all. Have you got the will to surmount
mountain-high obstructions? If the whole world stands against you sword
in hand, would you still dare to do what you think is right? If your
wives and children are against you, if all your money goes, your name
dies, your wealth vanishes, would you still stick to it? Would you
still pursue it and go on steadily towards your own goal? As the great
King Bhartrihari says, "Let the sages blame or let them praise; let the
goddess of fortune come or let her go wherever she likes; let death
come today, or let it come in hundreds of years; he indeed is the
steady man who does not move one inch from the way of truth." Have you
got that steadfastness? If you have these three things, each one of you
will work miracles. You need not
write in the newspapers, you need not go about lecturing; your very
face will shine. If you live in a cave, your thoughts will permeate
even through the rock walls, will go vibrating all over the world for
hundreds of years, maybe, until they will fasten on to some brain and
work out there. Such is the power of thought, of sincerity, and of
purity of purpose.

I am afraid I am delaying you, but one word more. This
national ship, my countrymen, my friends, my children — this national
ship has been ferrying millions and millions of souls across the waters
of life. For scores of shining centuries it has been plying across this
water, and through its agency, millions of souls have been taken to the
other shore, to blessedness. But today, perhaps through your own fault,
this boat has become a little damaged, has sprung a leak; and would you
therefore curse it? Is it fit that you stand up and pronounce
malediction upon it, one that has done more work than any other thing
in the world? If there are holes in this national ship, this society of
ours, we are its children. Let us go and stop the holes. Let us gladly
do it with our hearts' blood; and if we cannot, then let us die. We
will make a plug of our brains and put them into the ship, but condemn
it never. Say not one harsh word against this society. I love it for
its past greatness. I love you all because you are the children of
gods, and because you are the children of the glorious forefathers. How
then can I curse you! Never. All blessings be upon you! I have come to
you, my children, to tell you all my plans. If you hear them I am ready
to work with you. But if you will not listen to them, and even kick me
out of India, I will come back and tell you that we are all sinking! I
am come now to sit in your midst, and if we are to sink, let us all
sink together, but never let curses rise to our lips.